The White House report from Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director Michael Kratsios, Science: A New Golden Age, first announced in a July 22 Wall Street Journal article, iterates federal R&D policies and practices for FY 2028, outlines an almost industrial policy approach to federal investment, and provides a plan to move federal research programs toward a focus on individual scientists rather than university-based programs. It calls for more flexible, multidisciplinary, and multi-organizational, team-oriented research projects rather than centers housed within the nation’s research institutions.
In addition to the Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) report mentioned above, Science: A New Golden Age—which is predominantly about federal policy and approach to advancing AI in an effort to outcompete China for leadership in the platform technology—several other federal agencies made funding announcements Wednesday regarding their own contributions and future commitments to the government-wide Genesis Mission.
As revenues continue to tighten, many states entered fiscal year 2027 (FY 2027)—which began July 1 for most—with cautious or constrained spending priorities. With the exception of South Carolina, all states have now enacted their FY 2027 budgets. Most adopted maintenance‑level or reduced spending plans that limited new recurring expenditures, reduced one‑time appropriations, and reprioritized core services such as Medicaid and education.
Governors and legislatures also placed greater emphasis on affordability issues—including childcare, housing, and energy costs—alongside tax and property‑tax relief and traditional economic development tools such as site development, shovel‑ready initiatives, and business‑attraction strategies aligned with workforce programs.
The U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced that the Economic Development Administration (EDA) intends to award $169 million across six selected Tech Hubs. The competition for this funding was open to the 19 designated Hubs that had not yet received EDA Tech Hubs Implementation Awards.
The National Science Foundation announced this week the newest NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) to 12 teams across 20 states. Each team will initially receive an award of $15 million over two years, with the potential of receiving up to $160 million each from NSF over the next decade.
While repeatedly writing about VC investment trends over the past year can feel a little like the movie Groundhog Day, like the film, the story is more nuanced than it would first appear. Sure, the overall message of high-dollar deals driving headlines and boosting investment levels to record heights persists, but there are some emerging trends deeper in the data that bear exploring to see if there are issues or opportunities that impact how TBED investors allocate resources going forward.
In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the most recent year of available data from the Federal S&E Support Survey, nearly 40% of all federal obligations for science and engineering (S&E) to universities and colleges were concentrated in just five states: California, New York, Maryland, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Institutions in California, the state with the highest concentrations of these obligations, accounted for 12% of the total in FY 2024. At the institutional level, there is a similar level of concentration, with five institutions receiving 13% of the total, the 10 largest recipients accounting for 21%, and the 20 largest accounting for over one-third (35%).
States and policymakers are seeking a better understanding of the risks and vulnerabilities of extreme heat and its associated weather events; and, in doing so, are beginning to develop strategies for a hotter future, including anticipated fiscal impacts. Arizona, California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin have all developed and begun implementing those heat action plans. Meanwhile, a recent report on the impact of extreme heat found that Mississippi is among the states with the largest heat-related economic losses. The United States loses an average of $100 billion annually from heat-induced declines in labor productivity.
Between fiscal years (FYs) 2023 and 2024, federal obligations to higher education institutions for the support of science and engineering (S&E) activities experienced a year-over-year decrease. This decrease of $2.1 billion (4.3%) was the first since FY 2014 to FY 2015, reveals new Federal S&E Support Survey data. Data for FY 2024, the most recent available year, indicate that obligations remain much higher than previous years, up 135% since 2020, despite a sharp decline from the prior year in FY 2023.
Note that FYs 2020 through 2022 obligations include additional funding provided by supplemental COVID-19-related appropriations, which accounts for the higher funding amount.
Ask most university leaders how their institution contributes to the regional economy and the answer is likely to include research expenditures, patents, startups, and jobs. Those measures remain important, but they overlook one of the university's most valuable contributions. In today’s economy, where innovation, talent, and technology shape how regions grow, universities are helping communities adapt, connect, and compete.
When a new TBED project comes to town, the TBED practitioners inside know the long-term benefits of technology-based economic development: they can see and understand their progress in building a strong economic foundation for their host region. But for community-based and workforce development organizations and K-12 education systems in the surrounding area, the TBED project might appear to be an opaque operation that operates independently of its neighbors.
Governments have long used tax policy to encourage economic growth, investment, and entrepreneurship. But debates over tax cuts often focus on who benefits rather than on whether different groups respond to tax relief in different ways. A recent working paper by researchers at Yonsei University finds that, in the U.S., tax relief benefiting entrepreneurs generated larger increases in output, employment, and consumer spending than comparable tax relief benefiting wage earners. For state economic development practitioners, the study suggests that the impact of tax relief depends not only on its size, but also on the role recipients play in the economy.
